The Social Learning Curve

Originally posted 10/21/2010

In my last blog entry I talked about a couple of things to consider when starting up a new social media community. It addressed the fact that vibrant social communities don’t come that way out of the box, but that they grow and evolve over time.  In this entry, I’d like to continue that discussion and talk about how to keep that momentum alive once it’s been kickstarted.

Years ago when I used to teach software development methods, one issue we always addressed at the conclusion of the training was the difference between expected productivity gains and actual productivity gains.  The “learning curve,” while somewhat counterintuitive, should also be considered if you are trying to kickstart a social community.

To begin with: why does anyone ever try to learn a new technology? The answer: to be more productive than they can with the technology they already know.  So people often have the perception that the minute they learn a new technology, their productivity will jump up from the level at which they’ve been producing to a new, higher level of productivity.  But guess what. It usually doesn’t. Most of the time (especially if that new technology is revolutionary rather than evolutionary) a person’s productivity goes down for a while after learning something new before rising to a new higher level.  Why?  Lots of reasons, but the main one is that people are better at doing things they know how to do than they are at things they don’t know how to do (yet). As they practice with the new tools, they get better with them and more accustomed to them and eventually can do more with them than they used to with the old tools.

What does this have to do with kickstarting social media communities? A lot, it turns out. When you are getting a community going you have to be committed to trying lots of different marketing efforts: lots of different “kicks,” if you will. Some of these will work and some of them won’t. But regardless, each time you introduce something new to your community (especially if it’s radically new) you have to realize that you might be impacting the learning curve of the community. No matter what you do, the productive output of the community might go down before it tracks up again to a new level.  The problem is, it’s often hard to know if a decrease in participation is simply due to the learning curve or the fact that you’ve introduced a barrier to participation.  Case in point: the new Digg interface that debuted back in August.  Traffic to Digg dropped off noticeably after the rollout of their new interface (26% in the US; 34% in the UK).  Is that just the learning curve in action before traffic returns and eventually exceeds the previous levels? Or is it Digg’s “New Coke” moment and a future case study for social media marketing? As of this writing, the jury is still out. 

If you own or operate a social media site, you have to be prepared to give it a kick now and then. You also have to realize that the learning curve might mean that your kick might not work right away. You also have to be aware of the fact that not all kicks send the snowball down the hill: some can smash it to bits.

Digg and Reddit’s Excellent Adventure

Originally posted 9/1/2010

Popular social networking sites Digg and Reddit had some interesting things happen to them over the last few days.  And if nothing else, their experiences clearly illustrate that social networks are inherently unpredictable.

Let’s begin with Reddit.  Reddit was approached by supporters of California’s Prop 19 (a November 2010 ballot proposition to legalize marijuana in the state) to run ads supporting the proposition.  Reddit’s parent organization, Condé-Nast (who also owns several traditional magazines like Vogue, Glamour, and Vanity Fair as well as Wired, Ars Technica and Reddit) told them in no uncertain terms that they could not accept Prop 19 revenue.  End of story, right?  Not exactly.  Within hours, Reddit members had voted several different links for Prop 19 ads to Reddit’s front page, for which Condé-Nast receives no ad revenue (ok, that was probably predictable).  Reddit administrators announced that since Condé-Nast wouldn’t allow revenue from Prop 19 ads on the site, they were going to be running Prop 19 ads for free, and did so for several hours before they were apparently removed.  Reddit members had worked themselves into such a lather that Ben Huh, owner of FAIL blog and I Can Has Cheezburger among other sites, made a public offer to buy Reddit from Condé-Nast.  Where this all ends has yet to be decided, but for now the ads are gone from the site.

Meanwhile around the same time, Digg rolled out its much anticipated Version 4 user interface.  The result was a resounding thud.  Many Digg users were unimpressed, and spent several days complaining loudly and often that the new interface seemed to favor corporate news stories rather than user-generated ones.  After a couple of days, Digg members had apparently figured out enough about how the new page rating algorithm worked to game the site into displaying a large number of links on Digg’s home page from “corporate” news aggregator…Reddit (ok, that was also probably pretty predictable).  As of this writing, Digg was apparently contemplating a roll back of the user interface to the prior version, although it was possible they would stick with the new release and tune it more to the member’s liking.  In the meantime, Digg’s front page was (as of this post) still dominated by links to Reddit and its corporate sister site Ars Technica.

I’m waiting with baited breath for round 2 of this match, when Digg decides to start running Prop 19 ads.

The Flip Side of Social Networking Success

Originally published 8/11/2010

An interesting story came to light a few days ago. Presumably you are aware of the social news site Digg.  Well, it seems that a group of conservative members of the site conspired (apparently for months if not years) to drive its member-voted top content towards the right end of the political spectrum. By utilizing multiple accounts (against Digg’s terms of use) and by communicating with each other outside the community (through an invitation-only Yahoo group called the Digg Patriots), this group was massively successful in voting up news items that furthered their conservative agenda, and burying content that conflicted with it. They were also successful in provoking more liberal members of the site to the point where those members became belligerent and insulting enough to be banned from the site.

Now shills and plants were around for a long time before social networking, and some would argue that this group did nothing wrong. After all, Digg is all about crowdsourcing the top news stories (ok, not just news, but whatever bright and shiny web content that attracts the attention of the community). But this is an interesting phenomenon: These (apparently) weren’t paid actors intent on driving people to do more business with a company (or do less with a competitor); this was a group that basically took it upon themselves to hijack a community to further their political agenda. Why did they pick Digg? One would assume because of Digg’s popularity: according to a 2009 study by Social Computing Journal, it’s the #9 top social networking site.  After all, why hijack a site hardly anyone looks at? For social networking it seems, success is a two edged sword: A large group of sufficiently motivated users might make your social networking site an incredible success, but such a group might also choose to bend or break it to suit their agenda. And sadly, the more successful your social networking site the more likely it is that it will attract this type of activity.